Grazing The Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

raised their eyes, compressed their lips and nodded. They showed Derveet respect, but a dismissive kind of respect— failed woman . One of them spoke aloud, roughly, in the dialect. I think she said: “Fine weather madam.”
    “Ya, fine weather.”
    She came up to the verandah and leaned beside me. Our eyes met in rueful understanding, two outcasts together. Taking a silver case from her sash, she offered me a cigarette. I declined, knowing what one of those green skinned demons would do to me on an empty stomach.
    “Well, Endang of Timur, how is your observing?”
    ‘They won’t let me in,” I said. “I came here as an accredited representative of my family, but they refuse to let me in to the debates.”
    Derveet stared at me. “Oh, is that what you meant? 1 thought you meant you were observing- well, men’s business.” She seemed about to laugh, at her own mistake or mine.
    “You are amused?”
    “I beg your pardon. But if they’d let you in, it would do you no good, you know. You must have heard Annet: she is not enjoying herself. We have no Dapur skills on the mountain. Surely you realise—they don’t speak aloud.”
    For a moment I didn’t understand her. “Oh that’s ridiculous,” I exclaimed, when I realised. “You can’t express complex ideas in eye-talk. It’s just a household pidgin, with a clairvoyant element that’s been grossly exaggerated. Lots of educated women are giving it up altogether.”
    “Ah,” said Derveet, studying the end of her cigarette. “Is that what they are saying in Timur now?”
    I was embarrassed, not wanting to contradict her. I am sufficiently a Peninsulan not to wish to oppose a woman. But we had other things to discuss this morning, and we both knew it. She waited me out.
    “You are very anxious,” I began at last, “to implicate the KKK in this problem you have with misapplied medicines. Why is that?”
    “Because I don’t want Gusti Ketut Siamang to be prince of Timur.”
    Her directness made me flinch, and the look that went with her words was even more direct. Of course she thought I was a spy: eavesdropping on her, probably reporting to someone in the organisation, some covert “observer” of greater significance than myself. KKK: Kipas, Kertas, Kain. It was an open secret in Timur that the Fan, the Paper, and the Cloth concealed the operations of the Siamang family.
    And Derveet knew I was a supporter of Gusti Ketut.
    “I am at this inn by accident,” I said. “I have done you no harm.”
    She smiled. “My dear, I know. Hasn’t Buffalo always been with you?”
    It was stupid of me to be hurt by that.
    I faced her firmly. “Very well. The Siamangs are the KKK, and the KKK is ‘in the pay of the Koperasi.’ That’s what you are telling the bandits in a roundabout way, and of course it is true. If you were realistic you would see that they know everything perfectly well already. The trouble is, you don’t understand the nature of politics.”
    She inclined her head gravely.
    “Have you ever been to the east coast? Have you seen the great Domes, out at sea?”
    “Yes, I have seen them.”
    “That’s where our real Rulers are. Can you imagine what life is like out there, how different from our squalor? Don’t you see? We must make terms with the Koperasi, our own brutal renegades, in order to reach the Rulers beyond. It is our only hope. For a thousand years, we’ve been sinking into the dirt. What has the traditional Peninsula to offer, compared with what the Rulers have?”
    “Not much, I’m afraid. Not yet. We are on a different road, and a hard one. The question is, will they let us live to travel it any further—”
    I had heard the expression “different road” before, and it only irritated me. It referred to something fantastical and absurd, a mystic, wish-fulfilment view of traditional culture, like the notion of a political debate conducted in eye-signs.
    “Your story is incredible, ” I told her. ” A gangster unloads